1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to a system and method for selecting content for displaying over the Internet based upon some user input. Particularly, this invention relates to a system and method of selecting content from a content directory for display in a web-page where the content is based upon some arbitrary user input.
2. Background of the Invention
In recent years, web-pages, and other Internet components have changed to incorporate the popularity of customizable, interactive, and dynamic structure. Most existing web-pages contain pre-specified content, where a user simply downloads the source code of the desired page for viewing in an Internet browser. Some web-pages may have limited dynamic components and may offer limited customizability. For example, existing web pages may allow a user to make certain custom settings to a web-page. However, the user is usually prompted for specific information, and has a limited number of choices. A need still exists for a system and method capable of generating and displaying content in a web-page, based upon some arbitrary input by a user.
3. Summary of the Invention
The invention disclosed herein is a novel approach which addresses many of these limitations. A general feature of the present invention is to provide a system and method for displaying content over the Internet, based upon some arbitrary user input. The content may include, but is not limited to web content such as pictures and/or links and/or functional programs and/or tables and/or charts and/or functions etc.
The present invention provides a method for displaying information from the Internet. In one embodiment, the invention generates a plurality of content modules, each content module comprising a subset of the content of at least one web site. The content modules are then stored in a content module data directory. When a query is received from a user, the query is assigned to at least one content module. The results of the query are displayed on two regions of the user""s screen. On a first region of the user""s display screen a list of information relating to the plurality of retrieved web sites is displayed. On a second region of said display screen, information from said at least one content module associated with the query is displayed.
One feature of the present invention is to maintain a directory of web-page content modules and to algorithmically traverse the directory, based upon some user input, to synthesize content for a web-page.
A module as used herein may be a discrete chunk of content so that combining one or multiple modules will in effect synthesize part or all of the content of a web page. For example, a user may issue as input the word xe2x80x9cdolphinsxe2x80x9d and the invention will dynamically create a web page with various content modules related to dolphins. The exemplary method of the invention may traverse the directory containing the content modules and obtain modules which exactly correspond to the keyword xe2x80x9cdolphinsxe2x80x9d if such modules exist in the directory. For example, the traversal may obtain content modules with pictures and links to dolphin shows. Alternatively the invention may obtain modules that do not directly correspond to the keyword xe2x80x9cdolphins,xe2x80x9d but are related to keyword, if such modules exist in the directory. For example, the directory traversal may obtain content modules related to marine mammals.